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Friday 13 February 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Sellings, Arthur
Pseudonym of UK bookseller and author Arthur Gordon Ley (1921-1968), who began publishing sf stories with "The Haunting" in Authentic Science Fiction for October 1953; the best of his output of about thirty tales was assembled in Time Transfer (coll 1956; with five stories cut 1966) and The Long Eureka (coll 1968). In the 1960s his productivity increased; he died (suddenly, of a heart attack) just as he was ...
Rouch, James
Possible pseudonym of unidentified UK author (? - ) of the Zone sequence of Military SF adventures set well into World War Three, beginning with The Zone #1: Hard Target (1980) and ending with The Zone #10: Death March (2007 ebook). In a radioactive strip of German territory known as the Zone, an elite combat unit tries to survive. [JC]
Van Kampen, Robert D
(1938-1999) US businessman and author, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs, focused on the Rapture, tacitly shape his only sf novel, The Fourth Reich (1997), which Equipoisally creates a Hitler Wins scenario through the recovery of Hitler's soul from Hell and its insertion through Cloning into a human embryo. He soon becomes ruler of all Russia, and as the anti- ...
Saward, Eric
(1944- ) UK Television scriptwriter, editor and author, mostly of his work being for the BBC, specifically as editor and writer for the Doctor Who series, beginning with Doctor Who and the Visitation (first presented 15-23 February 1982 in six parts as "The Visitation"). He was involved in a 1985 controversy over excess violence in the series, possibly occasioned by an insecure sense of the ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...